Essentia
Sole Designer · 2015–2017
At Essentia, I owned the visual rebuild from screen to storefront: ground-up website redesign, packaging system for new pillow and sheet lines, steady regular email and print campaigns, and even spatial design work for new showroom interiors. A rare project where the brand needed to translate cohesively across digital, physical product, and built environment.
"Reasons" Campaign
Showroom Art + Business Cards
Essentia is a premium organic mattress brand with a lot to say — clinical certifications, patented foam technology, athlete endorsements, temperature science, allergy research. All of it real. All of it important. All of it nearly impossible to communicate without losing people in the details.
The challenge was making the science feel like a story.
I created the "Reasons You'll Love Essentia" campaign — a modular content system that took each product truth and attached it to something visual and emotionally resonant. A polar bear for temperature regulation. A meditating yogi for allergy-free sleep. A kid with a jetpack for performance recovery. Each reason stood alone but together they built a complete picture of the brand.
The campaign extended to printed business card bundles with rotating reasons on the back — so every card handed out carried a different message. Collectible, shareable, and impossible to throw away without reading.
This is what I mean when I say I translate complexity into connection. The science did not change. The story just finally had a face.
Re-Design Packaging
Pillows + Sheets
Essentia carried multiple pillow SKUs — each designed for a different sleeper, a different need, a different body. The packaging had to do two things simultaneously: differentiate each product clearly at a glance while keeping the whole line feeling unmistakably Essentia.
The solution was a color-coded system built on a consistent structure — kraft box, bold color band, oversized initial letterform, dark branded footer. Every SKU gets its own identity. Every box still belongs to the same family. The organic cotton sheet set carries the same DNA in a softer, more refined palette — same architecture, different register.
This is what a packaging system looks like when it actually works.
Magizine + Showroom
Paid Ads + Emails
There are a million examples of this, I'm happy to share upon request
UX Design
When I joined Essentia as their sole in-house creative the website needed a complete overhaul — not a refresh, a ground up rebuild. I redesigned the full site including the homepage, product pages, collection pages, and supporting content — translating a premium organic mattress brand into a digital experience that felt as considered and elevated as the product itself.
The homepage had to do a lot of heavy lifting — communicating certifications, celebrity endorsements, product collections, and brand story without overwhelming someone who just wanted to know if this mattress was worth the investment. The product pages balanced lifestyle photography, technical specifications, and conversion elements without losing the brand warmth.
This was 2015 — before Shopify made everything easier and before every DTC brand had the same template. This was custom, built with intention, and designed to make a premium product feel worth every dollar.
After I left they moved to Shopify. I take that as a compliment — the bar had been set.
